Monday, August 27, 2007

I thought Jordyn looked so cute and pretty in thisphoto. She really knows how to pose!

Evan stuck in the cupboard!

I decided that Evan was old enough to start helping me bake and cooktreats. He just wanted to eat all of the ingredients. So, we let him.He tried flour, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. You can prob. guesswhich of the ingredients he liked.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Last night we went to the Western Idaho Fair. We picked the busiest night and time to go... Friday night at dinner time. So, it was quite the adventure getting there and parking, but thanks to Jordyn'shandicap tag, we may have got the best parking spot in the whole place! We ate some food that was incredibly expensive, but incredibly good too. Then we made it in time to see a comedian. He was pretty funny and did a great impression of Barney (and how much he hated him!). Then we walked around to see all the animals. Before we left, we had to stop at the food booth run by the family members in our ward. We got one of their famous milkshakes and I have to say it was just as good as everyone had said it would be. Now I am craving another one!

This horse was relentless in trying to eat Evan for a snack!

It started making me nervous because he kept taking

"bites" at Evan! Evan thought it was hilarious.

This is Evan's new favorite activity.. pushing Jordyn in her wheelchair. Where ever we go, he HAS to push her. We get a lot of "Awww, that is so cute." from people who see them! It is pretty cute.

Jordyn with a fuzzy bunny in the background.

Evan petting a fuzzy bunny.

The kids playing in the pool today. Gotta love a bum photo. Evan will love this one when he is older, won't he?

Evan admiring the fly on Jordyn's knee. We put Jordyn's blue chair in the pool and she had a great time splashing her feet in the water.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

1. Starting to feel MUCH better. No more puking and I only feel queezy every once in awhile.2. Cravings: Fruit, fruit, and more fruit. Right now I love peaches the most. Also pretty big on apples, bananas, strawberries, grapes, watermelon, oranges, cantalope.... is there any fruit I'm not eating? I really hated turkey sandwiches for a few weeks (I think I ate too many of them for awhile), but now I am hooked on them again. I also love popsicles. Especially fudgsicles. Ok, I'll admit it, I like those ALL the time. However, I haven't found any brand that are even CLOSE to as good as Wilcoxson's Fudge Bars. All the other fudge bars out there are so small.3. I had my first baby dream. I dreamt it was a girl. So now we can see if it really comes true. I could be having my ultrasound this month, but we have to wait until next month for our insurance to kick in. I can't believe I have to wait an extra month when I could know right now... so unfair.4. Started to feel the baby kick a week or two ago. That is always one of the best parts of pregnancy!5. And of course, I am getting fatter. I checked out a few pregnancy videos at the library. I have done one of the videos .... one time! I did go walking a few mornings too. Why is it so hard to work out when you are pregnant? I think I know the answer to this. I keep telling Tom, "Why should I exercise and eat healthy when I KNOW that I am going to get fat no matter what I do?" And then he always says,"But HOW fat do you want to get." (sigh) It's such a mind game. Some days I want to do so good and then other days I could care less. I guess I will just keep up what I am doing right now. I think I actually eat pretty healthy about 80% of the time and at least I have exercised a little (better than nothing, right?). Then the other 20% of the time I eat bad treats and love it. Tom is always complaining that he is getting fat too. And of course he blaims it on me because I am pregnant and pressure him into buying bad foods or going out to eat. So the other day, after whining for a long time about how fat he is getting, he steps on the scale, and much to his surprise... "Oh, I lost some weight!"

Friday, August 17, 2007

After reading Pop's comment on Maria's Blog about the fire at Seeley Lake and the Montana fire in 2000, Tom and I found a quiz you can take on "real" or "fake" pictures people have taken. Pretty fun quiz and some really incredible photos. I scored 25 right out of 30. See how well you can do! The photo below is real! Taken by Forest Service worker, John McColgen, near Sula, MT in 2000.

Monday, August 13, 2007

This weekend we headed up to our ward camp out. It was at Sage Hen Reservoir, about 40-50 miles north of Boise. We left Friday night, after Tom got off work and we ate dinner. We got to the campsite and set up our tent and got settled. Then the ward had some dutch oven dessert. After that, we just stayed up late talking to people in the ward (there were about 10 families that came). Jordyn and Evan did great, too. Evan was just running around the whole time playing in the dirt. Jordyn even fell asleep quickly and slept all night. She must like sleeping in a tent! Evan was another story. I think he thought it was strange that we were going to sleep in the tent. But, after some wrestling around, we finally got him to fall asleep. We decided that we really like camping, but that next time we definitely want to get an air mattress!

In the morning the ward had a great breakfast. They cooked pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, and omelets. Tom and I both tried omelets this time and I think it was the best omelet I have ever had! I think I mentioned before that there is a family in our ward that does all the cooking for ward functions. I found out this weekend that their family has been running fair booths through a couple of generations of family. They now cook for church activities, family, and friends. And one brother in the family continues to run two fair booths at the Boise Fair. One is a milkshake booth... we will most definitely be stopping at that fair booth!

After breakfast, most people packed up and left. We decided to do a little geocaching. We took a short hike to a small waterfall where there was a cache hidden. We never did find it because it was thick forest and we couldn't get a good reading on the GPS. We drove home a different way than we came and we found 3 caches. We even got a dollar bill from one cache! Score! We were both really tired while we were driving home. Luckily, the drive was very pretty and followed the Payette River almost the whole way home. There were TONS of whitewater rafters and kayakers along the river. So, they kept us entertained and we even stopped a few times to watch the rafters go over some "rapids". And of course the funnest part of camping is coming home and cleaning up the mess! We were glad to be home in our own bed, but really had a lot of fun camping and we were glad we went.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

I decided that I am officially Jordyn's personal medical secretary. And most of the time, the photo to the right is how I feel! For the past two days I have been going to appointments, calling a lot of people on the phone, filling out paperwork, looking for old paperwork, and looking things up on the internet. My head hurts!

On Monday, we met with a company that provides us with a "service coordinator" that will help us access resources for Jordyn and coordinates Jordyn's care and services. What does that mean? Well, I am still trying to figure it out. Basically they help us find all the services we need and will keep us organized. They will even make appointments to certain places for you and go with you to certain appointments. Once I work with them for a while, I am sure I will understand it more. When they came to the house yesterday (the owner of the company and our new service coordinator) I got to tell them all the services that we need to find (services we had before we moved) and they also recommended services I might not even know about here in Idaho. This was the list of all the places Jordyn needs services from:

Pediatrician

Opthamologist

Geneticist

Dentist

Orthopedic Doc.

Orthotic store (foot braces for standing)

Wheelchair and equipment store

Diapers

Therapy

School

Support Groups

Babysitting/Respite care

It was very helpful to have them tell me exactly where to go for each service or to give me ideas of who I might go to. After all was said and done, I was glad I met with them. I did learn about a few cool places that I had no idea even existed. The one I am the most excited about is a "lending library" that checks out special needs equipment and toys for you to try out. I can't wait to see what cool gadgets they have for Jordyn to try.

Today we went to the neurologist. We met with the physician's assistant in the office. I did end up meeting the neurologist before we left though. They were both very nice and I didn't really mind meeting with the P.A. because he was very nice and great with Jordyn. It basically took the majority of the appointment to review Jordyn's history. You would think I would have it memorized by now, but it is impossible to remember when and where she did this or that for the past four years! It seems like I always get home and remember something important I forgot to tell them.... oh well. They said that her EEG had not changed any from two years ago. She has brain waves consistent with a child who is dev. delayed. Nothing new there.

They they recommended we take her to what is called a Pediatric Abilities Clinic. You meet with a bunch of therapists and doctors and they evaluate Jordyn and then recommend what therapies and other resources we should look into. We did something similar to this in Billings, but that was when Jordyn was less than a year old, I think. The P.A. seemed to think it would be extremely beneficial, so we will check it out! He also wanted us to see a Developmental and Behavioral pediatric specialist. He said that they can help us continue seeking a diagnosis for Jordyn's developmental delays, if there is one. And they can help us with the behavior side of Jordyn's problems. I am very interested to see what they have to say about her behavior. It seems like it has taken a turn for the worse the past 4-5 months. She is very irritable and continues to pull her hair out and kick herself when she is mad. I am wondering what their advice will be to help stop that! But, I am also worried they will want to put her on medication for it, too. I guess we will see.

So, that was about it for our appointment. I felt good about it after I left. The doc. seemed like he really wanted to get to know Jordyn. I am always happy with appointments as long as they have something new for us to try or someone new who might be able to help us in a different way. Now I have to work on getting Jordyn enrolled in school and therapy and setting up more appointments with other doctors! I think our month and half of doing pretty much nothing is officially over! I guess I better get back to work...

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Today we ventured outside to try our first geocaching in the Boise area. I found some caches near the Boise river, also by a small town called Eagle (very cute town, about 5 miles north of Meridian). We set out to find a series of 8 caches in a one mile stretch of trail. We only ended up finding one! We spent nearly an hour hiking around and then realized that all of the 8 caches were on the OTHER side of the river. So we drove to the other side of the river (there was no bridge to walk across) and found the trailhead. By then, the kids had fallen asleep. So, Tom went and found the cache for us. Then we went home and found a cache that was about 200 feet from our front door! Who would have known there was a cache so close to us. It makes you wonder how often you walk or drive by a cache and have no idea!

Tom told me that I won't ever be a really good geocacher because I won't stick my hand in holes or crevices that are under rocks or in the ground! I don't want to know what is living in there. And yes, people actually put caches in those creepy holes.

I told Tom that I thought geocaching was the only way to get husbands (at least mine) to go on walks.

Tom coming back to tell us that the cache is on the other side of the river. We always take the kids as far as we can on the unpaved trails, but sometimes Tom will go ahead and find the cache and bring it back. Some of the terrain is too bumpy for Jordyn's wheelchair. Our first up close look at the Boise river. I was so glad to finally see some water and green trees! It is actually very pretty and green near the river. But, we are starting to wonder if it will ever rain here!

Thursday, August 02, 2007

After a month and a half of paperwork, phonecalls, and lots of waiting, Jordyn finally got her disability health coverage! So, we scheduled some doctor's appointments right away. Today she had an EEG (tests the electrical activity in your brain). I called to schedule an appointment with her new neurologist, and since it had been almost 2 years since her last EEG, they wanted to get an EEG done before her appointment next Tuesday afternoon. I debated taking Evan with us, but of course I'm too chicken to get a babysitter yet, so he came with. The appointment actually went really well. We had absolutely no waiting time and it was a fairly quick test. Evan was actually very well behaved too, thanks to the TV in the room. The worst part is when the nurse places 26 individual electrodes on Jordyn's head. They have to rub some cream on each of the 26 spots, with a Q-tip, and then press each electrode on, the cover them up so they can't pull them off. Jordyn obviously hated that! But after that part, she did great and was actually very happy! Towards the end of the test, they flash a strobe light (to try and induce a seizure - it's never worked with Jordyn). I think it bothered me more than it did Evan and Jordyn! It gives you a headache! So here are the photos I got today:

Jordyn all wrapped up and not liking it too much.

After the test. We had to leave the hospital withher hair looking like this. We got a few strangelooks!

The next 2 photos are actually from 2 yearsago when Jordyn did a 24 hour EEG. I lovethese photos because she is still so happyeven though she was doing something thatwasn't very much fun! Some of you may havealready seen these photos, but I thought Iwould include them anyway because they areso cute!